Rolf Arnold - Assisted Learning

Assisted Learning

A Workbook

Rolf Arnold

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1. Auflage 2011

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© Bildungstransfer Verlag, Landau 2011

www.bildungstransfer.com

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Autor: Rolf Arnold

Verlag: Bildungstransfer Verlag, Landau

Umschlaggestaltung und Layout: Bildungstransfer GmbH, Landau

Herstellung: Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt

ISBN: 978-3-941972-02-5

Foreword

"Assisted Learning" is the first book in the series "Contributions to Adult Education" of the publisher Bildungstransfer. This series aims at making both future-oriented and action-relevant writings from the research on and practice of adult education, available to the interested English-speaking public.

Here Rolf Arnold combines three trends of long years of research activity: his innovative teaching methods based on the principles of self-determination and self-control of the learner, the concept of "pedagogic leadership" and finally the approach of "emotional competence". These three pillars form the fundamental basis for "Assisted Learning" as a future-oriented concept of adult education that places the learner at the centre point.

"Assisted Learning" (enabling didactics) characterizes a teaching-learning process, which shifts the angle of vision away from teaching to learning. In class, as in other learning situations there is no direct and causal production of learning. Learning takes place exclusively through independent acquisition of the learner. As a result what is taught is not what is learnt.

Rather, under this perspective the focus shifts away from the mediation of learning content by the teacher to an active appropriation by the learner. The teacher must prepare the learning content methodically in such a way that the activity of learning is transfered to the learner. This finding is mirrored in the systemic-constructivist thinking of the author.

Thus there is a departure from the so-called "generation or instruction teaching," which assumes that learning and the mediation of certain selected learning content could be feasible, if only the targets are accurately predetermined and the learning process planned with one's own methods and materials. The teacher can only encourage the students to learn, he can accompany them and "arrange" learning processes. Teaching from the viewpoint of "Assisted Learning" means creating learning-stimulating conditions and generating learning spaces.

In accordance with this only very briefly characterized approach, this text is designed as a "workbook". The reader will find almost thirty suggestions for self- reflection as well as numerous mnemonics. In accordance with a systemic- constructivist approach, we have waived the "sample solutions" which only gives the reader the impression of an apparent objectivity.

Contents

Prof. Dr. Rolf Arnold: Dipl.-Päd. (MA. Ed.), born in 1952, obtained his PhD at the University of Heidelberg (1983), worked thereafter for five years in an International Adult Education Centre, obtained his postdoctoral qualification at the Distance University of Hagen in 1987 and has been working at the Department of Pedagogics (in the fields of Vocational and Adult Education) at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern since 1990. He is also Scientific Director and Chairman of the Board for the Distance and International Studies Centre (DISC) as well as the Speaker of the Virtual Campus Rhineland-Palatinate (VCRP).

• He held teaching posts at the Universities of Heidelberg, Bern, and Klagenfurt.

• In 2002 he rejected an appointment at the University of Tubingen.

• Since 1984 he has undertaken numerous teaching and advisory field trips to developing countries, particularly in Latin America (Topic: Development of Educational Systems).

• He is a member of numerous expert commissions and member of the regional advisory committee for continuing education in the State of Rhineland-Palatinate, chairman of the administrative council of the German Institute of Adult Education (DIE), chairman of the advisory board of the Institute for Further Education and Counsel (IFB) for the State of Rhine- land-Palatinate and a member of the BMBF's innovation initiative for continuing education as well.